I cover breaking market news and, separately, personal finance for millennials. Got my training on the beat from TODAY show financial editor Jean Chatzky along with my own cornucopia of student loans. They say the best way to learn is by doing, and when it comes to this exercise in student debt, I’m a (reluctant) doer. Penn alum, Philly-area native, millennial-defending millennial.

Best Buy Beats On Bottom Line And Shares Soar Despite Less Than Stellar Sales Outlook

Electronics giant Best Buy posted a higher than expected profit Thursday morning, and the first quarter bottom-line beat was enough to send the stock smoothly sailing into the green in early Thursday trading despite a sales decline that does not appear to be a one-time thing. Best Buy management said that they expect “ongoing industry-wide declines” in the entire consumer electronics category, comments that initially sent shares of Best Buy into negative territory early Thursday morning but that were easily forgotten as investors focused on cost-savings that seem to be helping the company’s profit.

Best Buy reported $9.03 billion in first quarter fiscal 2015 revenue, a figure that misses the $9.23 billion Street estimate and marks a 1.9% decline over the $9.3 billion reported as revenue this time last year. Net income came in at $461 million — an improvement over the $97 million reported in the prior-year quarter — and resulted in GAAP earnings of $1.31 per share. Excluding special items like a one-time tax benefit from a legal settlement in Europe, Best Buy saw earnings of 33 cents per share, a penny above the non-GAAP earnings reported in the prior-year period and coming in well above the 19-cent per-share analyst consensus.

Though the company’s U.S. comparable store sales for the quarter declined 1.3%, Best Buy president and CEO Hubert Joly said in a statement Thursday that the decline was expected, especially in light of falling sales in the overall consumer electronics industry.

Contributing to the 1.3% comparable sales decline was a 4.1% decline in comparable consumer electronics sales and a whopping 13.5% decline in sales from Best Buy’s service category, which counts as revenue sales from service contracts, extended warranties, computer related services, product repair and delivery and installation for home theater, mobile audio and appliances. These declines were offset by a 9% increase in comparable sales for Best Buy appliances.

Softness in industry-wide consumer electronic sales doesn’t come as a surprise to Joly and his team; in the company’s fourth quarter fiscal 2014 earnings report, Best Buy EVP and CFO Sharon McCollam predicted continued declines in the industry, and this outlook was confirmed by competitor hhgregg last month. HHgregg released preliminary fourth quarter earnings results in April, forecasting drops in revenue and profit as a result of soft consumer electronic sales. (On Wednesday, hhgregg confirmed these declines and reiterated that they were the result of “continued volatility in the consumer electronics business” as well as “extreme” winter weather.)

In Thursday’s earnings release, McCollam elaborated on exactly which products in the consumer electronics category might see sales suffer, noting, “We are also expecting ongoing softness in the mobile phone category as consumers eagerly await highly-anticipated new product launches. Consequently, absent any major product launches, we are expecting comparable sales to be negative in the low-single digits in both the second and third quarters.”

Following the release of the earnings results, shares of Best Buy initially fell more than 4%, but slowly recovered those losses as early trading continued and investors processed the better news buried within the earnings report.

“After re-investing significant savings into pricing and new strategies, it appears the savings are finally flowing through to the bottom line,” Citi analyst Kate McShane said in a note Thursday morning.

Though signs that a turnaround is in fact taking place might normally send a stock surging, Best Buy’s killer 2013 — share of the stock nearly quadrupled in 2013 trading — indicates that this turnaround might be priced into the stock (even though it’s sold off and is down more than 37% since the first trading day of 2014).

After vacillating from red to green, back to red and then back to green in early Thursday trading, shares of Best Buy are currently surging more than 6%. Competitor hhgregg remained relatively flat in light of Best Buy’s news, and are currently up just 0.7%.

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